CommentMany historians consider the period
1937-1940 as a decisive one; during which period Congress-Jinnah
differences over elected provincial governments evolved rapidly
into an unbridgeable political rift between many Muslims and other
Indians. Durga Das is quoted on this period in [Durga
Das(3) 1937-1940 Provincial Autonomy to Jinnah gets the veto].

Ayesha Jalal
quoted from 'The Sole Spokesman,
Jinnah, Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan', 1985

Ayesha Jalal writes:
After the [1937] elections[in which Muslim League won only four and a
half percent of the Muslim vote], [poet-philosopher] Iqbal had advised
Jinnah to 'ignore Muslim minority provinces' and to look to the Muslims
of north-west India and Bengal, an irony not lost on the leader of a
party whose only electoral success had been in the minority provinces
which he was now being invited to spurn.."

"..But as even Iqbal could see the lip-service paid by the two main
Muslim-majority provinces[Punjab and Bengal] in October 1937 could be
turned into political advantage only if the League could find a line
which would appeal to all Muslims, whether in the majority or in the
minority provinces. Once the Congress had launched its Muslim
mass contact movement in March 1937, Iqbal was convinced that the
League would now have to decide 'whether it will remain a body
representing the upper classes of Indian Muslims or [the] Muslim masses
who have so far, with good reason, taken no interest in it.'

The real issue as Iqbal saw it, was 'how.. to solve the problem of
Muslim poverty? And the whole future of the League depends on the
League's activity to solve the question.'. .. "A bold social and
economic programme based on the 'Law of Islam' for the Muslim masses
would, according to Iqbal, do the trick; but what such a 'Law' involved
or how it could be implemented was not very clear, and in any case
Jinnah was too shrewd and too secular to chase this particular hare. If
the 'Law of Islam' was to be interpreted by the ulema, then Jinnah
would certainly have nothing to do with it.

Any recourse to the 'Law of Islam' would have sparked off an
ideological debate between the ulema and the more progressive
Muslims...Moreover, Jinnah could see that any appeal to religion, or to
a radical economic programme, might only too easily boomerang upon its
proponents. The League could not even begin to set out a plausible
facsimile of a social programme to eradicate Muslim poverty since such
support as it possessed came from vested landed and business interests
at the apex of society. In any event, such appeals were irrelevant to
Jinnah's predicament.

But the Congress's siren calls to the Muslims, both to the elected
representatives in the assemblies and to the people below, its efforts
to seek accomodations with provincial Muslim factions and to launch a
mass contact movement, had somehow urgently to be countered.

All Jinnah could do was to make much of the Congress threat to Muslim
interests, portraying it as a perfidious party no Muslims after the
U.P. experience could ever trust again; its mass contact movement a
knife at the throat of every Muslim politician; its ministries
blatantly favouring their own; a High Command whose iron control over
its own provinces clearly hinted at what lay ahead for the
Muslim-majority provinces once it came to dominate the centre.

Much of the League's propaganda at this stage was directed against the
Congress ministries and their alleged attacks on Muslim culture; the
heightened activity of the Hindu Mahasabha, the hoisting of the
Congress tricolour, the singing of the bandematram, the Vidya Mandir
scheme in the Central Provinces and the Wardha scheme of education -
all were interpreted as proof of 'Congress atrocities'.

So Congress was clearly incapable of representing Muslim interests, yet
it was trying to 'annihilate every other party'. Jinnah wanted the
League's claim to 'complete equality with the Congress' to be
recognised. While he was prepared to come to an understanding in this
basis:'we cannot surrender, submerge or submit to the dictates or the
ukase of the High Command of the Congress, which is developing into a
totalitarian and authoritative caucus functioning under the name of the
Working Commitee, and aspiring to the position of a shadow cabinet in a
future republic'.

He warned that Congress was taking the offensive deep into the Muslim
provinces, and hoping by dividing to rule. In Sind, his line was that
Congress had contrived a split among Muslims; certainly it had helped
to keep a League ministry out of office. In the C.P, the very provinces
where according to League propaganda, Congress had ridden roughshod
over Muslims, it was accused of dangling carrots before Muslim League
M.L.As. These were some of the arguments, according to Jinnah, why
Muslims needed to unite under his leadership.

Much of this propaganda was simply a response to Congress's attempts to
further consolidate its electoral success by winning Muslim support
both inside and outside the legislatures. But by now some elements in
the Congress High Command were coming to realise that they had perhaps
underestimated the League's capacity for survival, or the fears among
Muslims upon which it would play. So they called off the Muslim contact
movement and made tentative approaches to Jinnah through Subhas Chandra
Bose, an appropriate choice since Bose, as a Bengali, could see the
advantages for his own province in some understanding between Congress
and the Muslims.

But at this point Jinnah was not ready to parley with the Congress
unless it accepted the League as the 'authoritative and representative
organisation of the Indian Muslims.' just as he was ready somewhat
provocatively to admit that the Congress was the 'authoritative and
representative organisation of the solid body of Hindu opinion'.

Congress saw no reason to make a concession which cut against the basis
of its creed, and so Jinnah turned to the British, a last resort for so
dedicated a nationalist who had devoted his political life to battling
against alien rulers. In August 1938, he asked to meet Lord Brabourne,
the acting Viceroy, and hinted at a deal by which the League might
support the British at the centre if in return the British accepted the
League as the sole spokesman of the Muslims.

According to Lord Brabourne, Jinnah had ended up with the suggestion
that 'we[the British] should keep the centre as it is now' and that 'we
should make friends with Muslims' by protecting them in the Congress
provinces, and if this was done, 'Muslims would protect us at the
centre'. Jinnah himself confessed that if the League's interests so
demanded, he was ready to be 'the ally of even the devil'. 'It is not
because we are in love with Imperialism', Jinnah explained to the
annual League session in December 1938, 'but in Politics one has to
play one's game as on a chessboard.'

After war broke out
'This ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity now seemed the best guarantee
the British could find in India against an united political demand.
With his limited mandate from the Muslim-majority provinces, Jinnah now
had a semblance of a right to speak for Muslims at the centre. This is
where the British needed him and where they were ready to acknowledge
his standing.

But they wanted to keep him out of the affairs of the Muslim-majority
provinces...It seemed unlikely that Jinnah could produce a demand which
would seriously embarrass the British, and he had no power to create
problems for the war effort in the Muslim-majority provinces,
especially in the Punjab, the main recruiting ground for the Indian
Army, and in Bengal, the Raj's eastern front against Japan."

Just how confident Delhi was of its ability to exploit the weakness
both of the Congress High Command and its much weaker counterpart, the
League, was shown on 3 September 1939, when Linlithgow, without
consulting any Indian politician, simply announced that by declaring
war on Germany Britain had automatically turned India into a
belligerent in the allied cause. This was correct by the letter of the
law; but it was hardly the action of rulers concerned about the
reactions of their subjects.

The next day the Viceroy invited Jinnah, on an equal footing with
Gandhi, for talks, and informed them that the efforts to implement the
federal provisions of the 1935 [Government
of India] Act would be suspended until after the war. ..[The Congress responded by making an]
impractical demand on 14 September 1939 for immediate independence and
for a constituent assembly to make the arrangements. This was the price
Congress had to pay in order to maintain a semblance of solidarity over
its own divided camp.

Once the Congress had stated its demands, Linlithgow urgently needed a
means why which he could challenge its claim to be speaking for
all-India. Four days later, the League's more measured resolution
calling for abandonment of the 'Federal Objective' and a guarantee that
no scheme of constitutional reform would be enforced without its
approval gave the Viceroy the opening he needed.

On 18 October 1939, Linlithgow assured Muslims that 'full weight would
be given to their views and interests.' 'It is unthinkable', Linlithgow
added, 'that we should not proceed to plan afresh, or to modify
in any
respect any important party of India's future constitution without
again taking counsel with those who have in the recent past been so
closely associated on a like task with His Majesty's Government and
with Parliament'.

The League's Working Committee interpreted this statement as an
emphatic repudiation of the Congress claim to represent the whole of
India, and an indication that H.M.G 'recognise the fact that the
All-India Muslim League alone truly represent the Mussalmans of India
and can speak of their behalf', even though this was not quite how
Linlithgow intended his response to be understood.

By making prior agreement between the Congress and the Muslims the
condition for any advance at the centre, Linlithgow effectively handed
a veto to whoever could claim to speak for the Muslims. At the same
time he shifted the blame for failure to achieve constitutional advance
squarely upon Indian politicians. As Delhi had hoped, the Congress High
Command now had no option but to ask its eight provincial ministries to
resign; they did so on 10 November 1939 and the Governors took charge
of their administration under Section 93.

With the constitutional question now effectively in cold storage,
Linlithgow turned increasingly towards Jinnah and the League. He
frankly admitted that Jinnah had given him 'valuable help by standing
against Congress claims and I was duly grateful.' Had Jinnah supported
the Congress and 'confronted me with a joint demand, the strain upon me
and His Majesty's Government would have been very great indeed..
therefore, I could claim to have a vested interest in his position.'.

On his side, Jinnah, mindful of the risks of making an open declaration
of collaboration in the war effort, preferred to sit on the fence. In
private, however, he thanked Linlithgow 'with much graciousness' for
what the Viceroy had done to 'assist him in keeping his party
together'. When London pressed him [the
Viceroy] to try and reach an accord with Indian leaders,
Linlithgow argued that so long as Congress failed to meet Muslim
demands, it was a mistake to try 'swapping horses or doing anything
which might lose us Muslim support.'

So for the time being neither Jinnah nor the British were ready to
negotiate with the Congress. But they were ready to come to an
accomodation with each other which offered prospects of setting Jinnah
and the League on the road to recovery. (end quotes)

Comment
In this connection, Linlithgow pressed Jinnah to come up with a
'constructive plan' in public as a basis for agreement between the
British and the League and it was thus that the Lahore resolution of
1940 (the Pakistan resolution) came into being.

Sarvepalli Gopal writes:
After the decision of the Congress Working Committee [against his
urging] to accept office in the provinces where it had won
elections
Jawaharlal virtually went into retreat. Though still the president of
the party, he did not serve on the parliamentary board which sought to
guide and co-ordinate the working of the ministries. He took no serious
interest in the composition of the Governments, not even in his home
state, the United Provinces.

It is necessary to state this, because years later the charge was made
by Maulana Azad that the leaders of the Muslim League in the U.P had
agreed to co-operate with the Congress in return for two seats in the
Cabinet, but Jawaharlal had whittled down the number to one and thereby
destroyed the agreement reached by Azad.

'Jawaharlal's action gave the Muslim League in the U.P a new lease of
life. All students of Indian politics know that it was from the U.P
that the League was reorganized. Mr Jinnah took full advantage of the
situation and started an offensive which ultimately led to Pakistan.'
(Maulana Azad, India Wins Freedom)

Such severe criticism from so authoritative a quarter cannot lightly be
set aside. Even if Jawaharlal had been responsible for the decision to
exclude the representatives of the League in 1937, it is obviously too
superficial to trace the growing influence of Muslim communalism to one
such single event. But did Jawaharlal in fact decide in this manner.

Azad's memoirs, prepared under his instructions by Humayun Kabir, were
published in January 1959 after his death. The manuscript was shown to
Jawaharlal, who asked Kabir not to make any changes. He also referred
to the criticism at a press conference but in very general terms,
merely remarking that Azad had thought too much sometimes in individual
terms and not in terms of the historical forces at work. His loyalty to
the memory of an old colleague was too strong to permit him to rebut
the charge in detail. The result has been the entrenchment of a myth,
and its frequent repetition even in scholarly accounts of this period.

However, the facts are very different. When Jinnah took up again in
1936 the leadership of the Muslim League, he was still a nationalist
who had no wish to support, or rely on, foreign rule. Indeed his
aloofness, brittle ability and anti-imperial attitude made him as
disliked by the British as any Congressman. 'Of all the Indians I have
met', Hoare wrote to Willingdon, 'I think I have disliked Jinnah the
most. Throughout the Round Table discussions he invariably behaved like
a snake, and no one seemed to trust him. I greatly hope that he is not
getting a following among the Muslims.'

But Jinnah had no use for mass politics. His idea was to revert to the
pre-Gandhian period and to form once more an alliance of elite
politicians acting together to wrest concessions from the British. He
had been the chief architect of the Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the
Congress and the League and his hope now was for another similar
understanding. He therefore secured the election as president of the
League not of a loyalist contender but of Sir Wazir Hasan, a retired
judge of Lucknow whose family had close links with the Congress
leadership in the U.P.

The election manifesto of the League drafted by Jinnah was very similar
to that of the Congress and in the League parliamentary board there
were representatives of Muslim organizations, such as the
Jamiat-ul-Ulema, which supported the Congress. In all his speeches in
1936 Jinnah stressed his nationalism and commitment to freedom; and in
August he and Jawaharlal spoke from the same platform at the All-India
Students conference in an atmosphere of personal cordiality.

Yet Jinnah's tactics had never a chance of success. The Congress, and
Indian politics as a whole, had moved far since the nascent days of
1916. The premise of the Lucknow Pact, that the Congress and the League
were two communal parties with political objectives and that they could
form an equal partnership was long dead. Certainly the Congress, which
had mobilized the masses in a series of campaigns and established
itself as a broad nationalist front, could not now be expected to agree
that it was primarily a Hindu organization and would not seek to enlist
the Muslim and other religious minorities in India.

To Jawaharlal in particular, critical of vested interests and
emphasizing the basic problems of poverty and hunger from which the
vast majority of the Indian people, whatever their religion, suffered,
the religious elitism of Jinnah appeared medieval and obscurantist.

Throughout the early months of 1937 he and Jinnah attacked each other
in the press. When Jawaharlal stated that there were only two forces
which mattered in India, British imperialism and nationalism
represented by the Congress, Jinnah replied there was a third party,
the Muslims. Jawaharlal brushed this aside as communalism raised to the
nth power. Muslims could not be regarded as 'a nation apart'; and the
Muslim League represented a small group functioning in the higher
regions of the upper middle classes and having no contacts with the
Muslim masses and few even with the Muslim lower middle class.

The controversy soon descended to verbal slanging. Jinnah spoke of
Peter Pan who refused to grow up, 'the busybody President' who seemed
'to carry the responsibility of the whole world on his shoulders and
must poke his nose in everything except his own business'. On his part,
Jawaharlal declared there were Muslims in the Congress 'who could
provide inspiration to a thousand Jinnahs'. He had no use for secret
pacts with anybody, much less with Jinnah. It is at this time that
Jinnah seems to have developed a particular allergy to Jawaharlal, his
exuberance and his socialist ideas. He even appealed over Jawaharlal's
head to Gandhi for an understanding on Hindu-Muslim relations, but was
firmly rebuffed.

The election results had their own lessons for both Jawaharlal and
Jinnah. While the Congress had done spectacularly well in the general
constituencies, in the 482 seats reserved for Muslims it had put up
only 58 candidates and won in 26. In eight provinces it had not put up
candidates for these special seats at all, and most of its victories in
such constituencies were in the NWFP, where Abdul Gaffar Khan had given
the Congress a decisive hold.

On the other hand, the Muslim League had not contested all these 482
seats and had won only 109 of them. It could not gain a majority even
in the Muslim-majority provinces of the Punjab and Bengal. In the
former, it was the Unionist Party, dominated by landlords, which won a
majority, while in Bengal the single largest parties were the Congress
and the peasants's party led by Fazlul Haq.

To Jawaharlal this suggested that the Congress had not done enough work
among the Muslims, and that in a new 'mass contact' programme, a
special effort should be made to reach the Muslims. There was
widespread anti-imperialist spirit in the country and, apart from the
microscopic handful at the top who were fearful of social changes, the
Indian people as a whole were with the Congress. The party had
therefore erred in not setting up more Muslim candidates. The younger
generation of Muslims and the Muslim peasants and workers were getting
out of the rut of communalism and thinking along economic lines, and
the Congress should set about organizing this latent support. 'The
Congress is supreme today so far as the masses and the lower middle
classes are concerned. Even the Muslim masses look up to it for relief.
It has hardly ever been in such a strong position.'[Jawaharlal to
Stafford Cripps, February 1937]

The elections had gone some way to lay the ghost of communalism, and
the Congress should follow this up by working among the Muslim
intelligentsia and masses and rid India of communalism in every shape
and form. Each provincial Congress committee should set up a special
committee to increase contacts with Muslims and enrol more Muslim
members. The central office of the Congress would also set up a
separate department for this purpose. Notices should be issued in Urdu
as well as in other local languages and wide circulation should be
given to a new Congress journal being published in that language.

Gandhi disapproved of this 'mass contact' programme and preferred to
proceed cautiously through constructive work among the Muslim masses by
both Hindu and Muslim workers, but the Working Committee preferred
Jawaharlal's scheme. For it recognized that the Gandhian constructive
programme no longer evoked enthusiasm, and Muslims had absolutely no
trust in Gandhi and considered him their enemy.[Proceedings of the Working Committee 1937]

Jinnah's diagnosis was very similar, but the lesson he drew was the
opposite. The Muslim League had made a mistake in not organizing itself
better for elections and contesting all the seats reserved for the
Muslim electorate. The Congress was increasingly becoming a mass party
and striking out in new directions. Were its approaches to the Muslim
masses to prove effective, Jinnah and the League would be left high and
dry.

So, if the Congress were to take him seriously, it would be necessary
to strengthen the communal feelings among the Muslims. The only
possible answer to the Congress 'mass contact' programme was to make
the Muslims submerge their economic interests in religious zeal. Then
the Congress would be forced to deal with the League. The hold of Islam
on the Muslim masses should be strengthened to provide the sanction for
the demand of the Muslim upper and middle classes for jobs and
security.

It is against this general background that developments in the U.P fall
into place. In the elections, the chief opponent of the Congress was
not the Muslim League but the National Agriculturist Party, an
organization of landlords promoted by the Government to challenge the
influence which the Congress had gained over the tenants.

The British attached greater importance to this party than to the
Muslim League and did not hesitate to coerce Muslim talukdars to
transfer their allegiance from Jinnah, 'the arch enemy of the British
raj' to loyalists like the Nawab of Chhatari. So the Congress and the
League reached an informal, unspoken understanding in this province and
avoided a conflict as much as possible. The question of Hindu-Muslim
relations and of the recognition of Muslims as a separate third party,
raised by Jinnah on an all-India level, did not apply in the U.P.

Here the main issue was authority, landlordism and reaction on the one
hand and tenant right on the other. In this contest, the Congress and
the League made a joint effort to defeat the Government and their
puppets. The parliamentary board of the League in the U.P was an odd
assortment of reactionaries, leaders of the Jamiat who supported the
Congress, ex-Congressmen with personal affiliations to the Nehru family
like Chaudhuri Khaliquzzaman, and many with no fixed attachments.

The most energetic campaigner for the League was a leader of the
Jamiat, Maulana Husain Ahmad, who was very close to the Congress. Some
candidates of the League would probably have stood as Congressmen if
requested and during his election tours Jawaharlal supported the League
candidates if they were not obvious reactionaries and the Congress was
not contesting the seats.

After the elections, the various elements in the parliamentary board of
the League fell out. When in March the Congress refused to take office
and a loyalist 'interim' ministry was set up by the Government,
Khaliquzzaman was asked to join it but refused.

However, another member of the League joined, and though he was
expelled from the board, some other members, including Maulana Husain
Ahmad, resigned. At this stage, Govind Vallabh Pant and Mohanlal
Saxena, leading members of the U.P Congress, not expecting their own
party to take office in the near future, approached Khaliquzzaman to
reinforce his decision not to join the 'interim' government and pressed
him to return to the Congress. It is possible, though they did not
admit this, that they went even further and offered to form a pact with
the League. The atmosphere then, born of a collective triumph over the
Government and the latter's efforts to thwart the decision of the
elections, was conducive to this.

Jawaharlal got wind of these overtures and warned Pant against any such
agreement. 'I am personally convinced that any kind of pact or
coalition between us and the Muslim League will be highly injurious. It
will mean many other things also which are equally undesirable.' It is
worth adding that Azad, who was staying with Jawaharlal at this time,
was equally opposed to any such pact.

Faced with this reprimand, the U.P Congress abandoned any idea it might
have had a pact with the League; but relations between the two parties
continued to be cordial. In a vacancy which arose in a Muslim
constituency which had been held by the League, the board of that party
in the U.P, despite Jinnah's announcement that it should be retained by
the League and warning the Congress not to claim it, decided to leave
it to a leading Congressman, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai.

Jinnah himself, however, was in favour of a coalition with the
Congress, or, as he termed it, 'a united front'. Now that the Congress
was willing to accept office if it were satisfied on certain points,
there seemed to him to be no substantial difference between the two
parties. He was right to the extent that the Congress no longer even
claimed to be a revolutionary organization and there was no difference
on that score between it and the League.

But the main hitch still remained, that any coalition with the League
implied the Congress accepting a Hindu orientation and renouncing the
right to speak for all Indians. For fear that Khaliquzzaman might go
further than a coalition and agree to merge the League with the
Congress, Jinnah came to Lucknow and authorized the continuance of
negotiations on the basis of the maintanance of separate identities.
But this the Congress was not prepared to grant.

When, towards the end of June, it became clear that the Congress would
take office, Khaliquzzaman and Nawab Ismail Khan again suggested a
coalition. Khaliquzzaman seems to have gone further and and informed
Azad that the League would accept any terms provided he and Nawab
Ismail Khan were included in the ministry. [n.b. Jawaharlal to Rajendra
Prasad. In Khaliquzzaman's account of his meeting with Azad, he states
that discussion centred only on two points:whether the League would
resign office along with the Congress if at any time the Congress
resigned(to which he agreed), and whether he would agree to another
Muslim in place of Nawab Ismail Khan(which he refused) 'Pathway to Pakistan'].

Jawaharlal was not enthusiastic, for a Congress ministry should
undertake land reforms and he did not wish this to be precluded by any
agreement with the League, which was influenced by zamindari interests.
But Azad was attracted by the possibility of the League ceasing in the
U.P to exist as a separate group. He was in charge of the negotiations,
being authorized by the Working Committee to deal both with Congress
affairs in the U.P and Bihar and with Muslim representation in all the
provincial ministries.

He consulted Jawaharlal, Pant, Kripalani and Narendra Deva and it was
decided to offer ministerships to Khaliquzzaman and Nawab Ismail Khan
in return for acceptance of the Congress programme and the winding up
of the Muslim League group and the U.P parliamentary board. All Muslim
League legislators should become full members of the Congress party and
abide by its discipline; no Muslim League candidates should be set up
in by-elections, and they should resign their offices or vacate their
seats whenever the Congress decided to do so.[ref:Jawaharlal to
Rajendra Prasad, Khaliquzzaman]

These were stringent conditions which, if accepted, would have
seriously weakened the Muslim League in the U.P, although Khaliquzzaman
and others were not asked to sever all connection with the parent
Muslim League or specifically to take the Congress pledge.
Khaliquzzaman agreed to all conditions except two: the winding up of
the parliamentary board and the injunction against contesting
by-elections. He himself was willing to accept even these but was not
authorized to do so. However, he added, this might happen in any case.

In fact, so eager was he to reach an agreement and take office that he
offered to call a special meeting of the executive committee of the U.P
Muslim League to consider the question of by-elections. He also
suggested that members of the League be given freedom of vote on
communal matters. But Azad and Jawaharlal insisted on full acceptance
of the original conditions, and the negotiations broke down. Neither at
that time, nor even later during his life did Azad voice any regrets,
either to Jawaharlal or in public.[In fact, he seems to have expressed
his satisfaction. Edward Thompson reported a conversation in October
1939: 'We will not have in the Cabinet, said one leader who had a lot
to say in what happened(and he was a Moslem), 'a man who was our
comrade for twenty years and then ratted because he thought we were
going to be beaten!'(Enlist India to
Freedom, 1940). The reference is clearly to Azad speaking about
Khaliquzzaman].

This account makes clear that while Jawaharlal was never happy about
these opportunist, unprincipled bargainings with the League which had
now, in the U.P, become a narrow upper-class organization, he had
allowed Azad, Pant and Rafi Kidwai to do what they thought best.
Certainly the discussions had not broken down on the question of one or
two representatives of the League in the ministry, nor had Jawaharlal
decided unilaterally that it should be one and not two.

Whether, if the negotiations had succeeded, the country and the
Congress would have benefitted in the long run is debatable. Any
agreement would in effect have accepted that politics were a matter of
alliances between upper-class groups, betrayed all Muslims who thought
in non-communal terms and abandoned the economic programme on which
Jawaharlal had been laying so much stress.

No such agreement could have endured, for the League had no long-term
economic or social objectives. The only incentive where its leaders
were concerned was the hope of office, and once this was fulfilled the
cracks were bound to widen. Indeed, the negotiations were throughout
hollow and unreal, for alongside the parleys of Azad and Khaliquzzaman
a by-election was being fought in a Muslim constituency where the new
strategy of Jinnah was finding full play.

Both the Congress and the Muslim League set up candidates, converting
it into a test election. Jawaharlal himself spend two full days in the
constituency, speaking as usual of economic and national interests,
while the League raised the cry of 'Islam in danger'. Jinnah issued an
appeal in the name of Allah and the Koran, and Maulana Shaukat Ali
spoke of civil war and called on voters 'to crush the swollen head of
Jawaharlal'[Fida Sherwani to Jawaharlal, 30 June 1937]. Money and
bearded maulanas were in great demand.[Assistant Secretary U.P.P.C.C to
Rafi Kidwai, 6 July 1937]Supporters of the League gave large donations
to mosques and madrasas, while the 'interim' government assisted the
League by arresting Muslim workers of the Congress.[Jawaharlal's
statement to the press, 10 July, Bombay Chronicle].

The League's candidate was helped by the fact that he was Malkani
Rajput[a sect of Rajputs converted to Islam], and the caste panchayat
decided to penalize any member who voted against him. This, along with
the bigotry that had been aroused, ensured the defeat of the Congress
candidate. It was the beginning of a new phase of Indian politics, in
which communal rancour was to spread and embitter all relations. For
the first time in his career, Jawaharlal was the object of a hostile
demonstration. On his way to a meeting in the constituency, his car was
pelted with stones.[The Bombay Chronicle, 14 July 1937]. In these
circumstances, little importance can be attached to the talks with
Khaliquzzaman, and no weighty consequences followed their failure.

The refusal of the Congress to form coalitions with the League seemed
to Jinnah to be a betrayal born of arrogance, and since then his policy
had been clear. Acceptance of office by the Congress made it an easy
target. He attacked it as a Hindu fascist body which was out, with the
assistance of a few 'traitors' to destroy the Muslim minority. When
Jawaharlal and other Congress leaders asked him repeatedly to specify
instances, Jinnah, now fast beginning to show the mastery of
obstructive tactics and skill in avoidance which were to dominate
Indian politics for the next ten years, steadily refused.

He talked of the suppression of Urdu although Urdu was not the language
only of the Muslims and Jawaharlal had clearly reiterated the Congress
policy of developing Hindustani in both Urdu and Devanagari scripts as
the national language.[The Question of Language, August 1937]. He
objected to the singing of the Bande Mataram, ignoring the facts that
that song had long rid itself of its Hindu antecedents and that the
Congress, on Gandhi's initiative, had decided that only the first two
stanzas, which had no religious overtones, should be sung at public
gatherings.[Statement of the Working Committee, 28 October 1937]. But
otherwise Jinnah would mention no particular grievances.

It would indeed have been difficult for him to do so; for, as even the
British Viceroy and Governors conceded, the Congress ministries took
special care to avoid harming Muslim interests. The documentary record
of complaints published later by the League carried little conviction
and explains why the League would not agree to the Congress proposal
for an impartial inquiry. Sir Sikander Hyat Khan, the premier of the
Punjab and the most cool-headed of the League leaders, later toned down
the charge of 'atrocities' committed by Congress governments to
high-handedness of the majority community in some Congress provinces.

When Linlithgow informed Jinnah that he had examined the position and
could find no specific instances of oppression, all that Jinnah could
say in reply was that the Hindus had 'a subtle intention of undermining
the Muslim position' [Lord Glendevon,The Viceroy At Bay, 1971].

But this did not mean that Jinnah's effort to create a legend of the
Muslim community being trampled on by the Hindus was a failure. As the
majority of Indians happened to be Hindu by religion, it was an easy
slide from the fact of Congress ministries representing majority
opinion to the suggestion of these ministries representing Hindu
majority opinion. That the Congress was in office put it on the
defensive, and the League's successful myth-making was not the least of
the unhappy consequences of office acceptance.

Jinnah went around the country denouncing the Congress as anti-Islamic
and promoted a drive to build up the organization of the League at the
provincial and district level. The League was as committed on paper as
the Congress to economic and social reforms and proclaimed the
objective of full independence in the form of a federation of free
democratic states.

But the decision to convert the League into a mass party and the
resentment of the 'mass contact' campaign of the Congress did not mean
the overthrow of the League's reliance on the upper classes. Indeed,
the tenancy reforms proposed by the Congress brought many Muslim
talukdars in the U.P from the National Agriculturist Party into the
League, and in the Punjab the link between the League and the Unionist
Party was facilitated by support to rich agricultural producers.
'What', Sikander Hyat Khan said to Jawaharlal sometime in 1938, 'have I
got in common with Jinnah? Nothing except(pointing dramatically at
Jawaharlal)'common opposition to you!'

Jinnah, in fact, was prepared to use every influence and interest to
strengthen Muslim communalism. He frightened the wealthy by prophesying
that one result of the Congress policy would be class
bitterness.[Presidential Address at the Lucknow session of the Muslim
League October 1937] On the other hand, he encouraged Fazlul Haq of
Bengal to support the peasants of that province against the zamindars
not on an economic but on a communal basis; and Fazlul Haq agreed to
this after failing to secure a coalition with the Congress.

Jinnah also made overtures to the British, warning them that if they
did not devote more attention to the Muslims there was a real risk that
these would be driven into the arms of the Congress. However, if the
British 'protected' the Muslims in the Congress provinces, the Muslims
in return would 'protect' the British at the Centre.[Zetland papers,
Brabourne Papers].

But at this period the British were having a semi-honeymoon with the
right wing of the Congress, and paid little heed to Jinnah. Linlithgow,
in particular, had a poor opinion of Jinnah as a leader[Linlithgow to
Haig, Haig papers]. Jawaharlal's talks in London with Zetland and
Linlithgow made the League suspicious and in desperation Jinnah sent A.
R. Siddiqui and Khaliquzzaman to Europe in 1939 to contact the German
and Italian Governments.[Zetland papers].

The Government of India ignored these efforts and set aside the Muslim
mood of frustration to be exploited in any change of circumstance. But
the Congress was baffled. Jawaharlal was willing to go as far as to
consider, in any scheme of provincial redistribution, the grant to
important groups and minorities of territories within which they could
feel that they had full opporunities of self-development, without which
creative life was hardly possible.[draft concluding chapter written on
23 August 1937 for K.T. Shah's book Federal Government]. He disliked
the term 'communal provinces' but his scheme contained the germ of
territorial redistribution on the basis of religion. But to concede
Jinnah's main demands, that the Congress should not approach the Muslim
masses but should recognize the League as representative of Muslim
opinion, was unthinkable.

However, so long as the Congress was in office it could not ignore even
uncorroborated allegations of partisanship. One way out of this dilemma
was to approach the Muslim peasantry over the heads of the leaders of
the League with a programme of economic change; but here Jawaharlal
found that, with the Congress ministries not proceeding fast enough,
the communal approach, however 'hysterical' and
'medievalist'[Jawaharlal's comments on the Muslim League session
October 1937, The Bombay Chronicle, 19 October 1937] was successfully
hampering efforts to draw the Muslim masses into the Congress.

The other alternative was to take advantage of the League's decision to
widen its base and precipitate a conflict between the reactionary
outlook of its leaders and the needs of the Muslim masses. So
Jawaharlal encouraged the holding of Muslim mass meetings demanding
debt relief and abolition of the talukdari system in the interests of
the Muslim kisans.[Jawaharlal's letter to Siddiq Ahmed Siddiqui, 8
September 1937].

But these were long-term projects which hardly gathered any momentum in
the context of extreme communal propaganda and violence. The League,
which was promoting this activity, understandably rejected all
suggestions by the Congress for consultation to promote communal
harmony. The British police and magistrates also often did little to
curb religious riots in order presumably to discredit the Congress
ministries. If this were their objective they gained considerable
success, for Hindu-Muslim rioting strengthened the anti-Congress
feeling among the Muslim masses. Jawaharlal realized what this might
finally mean.

'As you know I am overwhelmed with this sense of impending catastrophe.
I find that few persons even among our leading politicians have this
sense of tension and this premonition of approaching disaster. I fear
we are rapidly heading for what might be called civil war in the real
sense of the word in India. Our future conflicts are never going to be
on the straight issue of Indian nationalism versus British imperialism.
British imperialism in future is certainly going to play an important
part in opposing us. But it will do so more from behind the scenes
exploiting all manner of other groups to this end.'[To Sri Prakasa, 15
August 1939]

[When World War II broke out in
September 1939]It was for India to
decide whether she would go to war. The Viceroy had now, without
consulting representative opinion, taken that decision. But it was
absurd for a subject India to fight for the freedom of Poland. If India
were to participate enthusiastically in the war, she would have to be
granted freedom. One had to be free and democratic to fight for freedom
and democracy. If Britain fought for democracy, her first task was to
eliminate empire from India. The Indian people would not bargain or
seek to take advantage of Britain's difficulty; but whatever they did
would have to be in accord with India's freedom and dignity.

The resolution of the [Congress] Working Committee was on these
lines....[The Committee] rejected both Gandhi's advice that there
should be no demand for a statement of war aims and the suggestion of
Subhas Bose that civil disobedience should be launched immediately.
...A free and democratic India would gladly associate herself with
other free nations for mutual defence against aggression and for
economic co-operation. The British government were, therefore, invited
to declare their war aims clearly and state how this would be applied
to India and given effect to immediately, so that India could assume
her proper role in the emergence of the new world order.

But the Viceroy had made up his mind that his present duty was neither
to move even at snail's pace along the path of constitutional progress
nor to seek ways of harnessing India's enthusiasm for democratic
principles. He had no committment to the Indian people, and even the
tragedy of famine in Bengal caused him no concern. He was now a war
Viceroy whose first objective was to make India a safe base for the
mechanical prosecution of the war, and to provide men and money. Every
decision had to be judged solely by the extent to which it would
promote an Allied victory; and Linlithgow lacked the imagination to see
that wars are not won by guns and soldiers alone.

In this projection, the Congress, as guided by 'a doctrinaire like
Nehru with his amateur knowledge of foreign politics and of the
international stage', had no place. On the other hand, more importance
should be given to the Muslim League; and the Viceroy thought that this
would have the added advantages of appeasing the army, which was
largely Muslim, and the tribal elements in the North-West Frontier.
Linlithgow decided, therefore, to ignore Jawaharlal and to break with
the Congress.

...Sikandar Hyat Khan, though nominally a member of the League, had no
wish to see Jinnah break up the Unionist Party in the Punjab, which was
a party mainly of rural landed interests held together by economic and
not communal considerations. He therefore advised the Viceroy that
nothing should be done to inflate Jinnah or make him more difficult to
deal with.[Zetland papers]. But, despite this warning, Linlithgow sent
for Jinnah; and Jinnah asked that the Congress ministries be
dismissed.[Zetland papers].

..On the British government's war aims for India, the Viceroy's "public
statement left no doubt that the Government had not revised their
policy in the context of the war situation...." At the end of the war,
the British Government would be very willing to enter into
consultations as to any modifications of [the 1935 Government of India]
Act that might be made with the agreement of all the vested interests
in India..

From the start of the war crisis, the Congress had hoped for a joint
approach with the League to the British Government. Jinnah had been
invited to the meeting of the Working Committee in September, but had
declined. However, the Congress thought the idea worth pursuing. The
League was also committed to independence, and it was this demand which
the Government had spurned. So the Congress might utilize the urgency
of the situation to secure priority for the political issue over
communal differences.

Jawaharlal met Jinnah informally in October and thought the latter had
not been totally immune to this suggestion. To humour Jinnah's vanity,
Azad stayed away from the talks with the Viceroy.[Zetland papers].
Sikander Hyat Khan rang up Azad to say that a compromise might be
reached if the Congress recognized the League as an 'important
organization even if not the sole organization representing Muslim
opinion'.[Nehru to Rajendra Prasad, 17 October 1939]. This was
unobjectionable and made an agreement seem possible.

The day after Linlithgow's statement, Nehru wrote a friendly letter to
Jinnah, offering to meet him again wherever it suited him to come to
closer grips with their differences. ...At the end of the month,
Gandhi, Jawaharlal and Rajendra Prasad met Jinnah again. He was assured
that the Constituent Assembly would be formed on the widest possible
franchise and by agreement on communal representation, and that
Assembly would frame full protection for the rights and interests of
all minorities...

These efforts worried the Government, who were relying heavily on the
antagonism of the League to the Congress. The nationalist leaven was
bound to work in that body, particularly among its younger
members[Zetland papers 23 October 1939], while Jinnah was
unpredictable, 'and I had one or two rather anxious moments during the
period when he, Jawaharlal and Gandhi were discussing the situation
together'.[Zetland papers 18 November 1939].

But the Viceroy's fear was short-lived...[When] the Congress announced
that its ministries would resign, [Jinnah] lost interest in these
conversations. He had no wish to be involved in any agitation which the
Congress might launch and was prepared to fall in line with the
Government in order to secure concessions from them.

To the Congress resolutions in the provincial assemblies on India's
attitude to the war, the members of the League were directed to move
amendments asserting that democracy was unsuited to India. Fazlul Haq,
the premier of Bengal.. challenged Jawaharlal to join him in a joint
inquiry into atrocities committed by the Congress against the Muslims.

Jinnah himself declined to sign a communique' drafted by Jawaharlal,
stating that the Congress and the League had much in common on the
political issue and the general objective; and soon after the Congress
ministries resigned in the first week of November, he called on all
Muslims to celebrate a 'deliverance day'. The challenge of Fazlul Haq,
which Jawaharlal promptly accepted, was conveniently submerged in the
demand for a Royal Commission which obviously the Congress could not
accept as it implied acquiescence in British intervention in Indian
affairs.Their suggestion of a reference to Sir Maurice
Gwyer, the Chief Justice of the Federal Court, held no interest for
Jinnah.

There was clearly no scope for further talks with Jinnah, and
Jawaharlal called them off...There was also no room for further
negotiations with the Government. Zetland's reference to the Congress
as a Hindu organization which should reach a settlement with the Muslim
League put a lid on all talks.."

Subsequently, the Pakistan resolution was passed. Later "..On learning
that Sikander Hyat Khan was trying to get in touch with moderate
Congress leaders so as to bring the Congress and the League together,
Linlithgow cracked the whip and called him off.[Penderel Moon, 'The
Round Table', July 1971].

The widening gulf between the two parties enabled the Government to
abandon all efforts to reach a settlement. Nothing more seemed to be
required than preparations to deal firmly and promptly with any form of
civil disobedience.[Zetland papers, April, May 1940]. 'I am not too
keen to start talking', commented the Viceroy, 'about a period after
which British rule will have ceased in India. I suspect that that day
is very remote and I feel the least we say about it in all probability
the better.'[Zetland papers, 5 April 1940]

Stanley Wolpert
quoted from 'Jinnah
of Pakistan', 1984

Stanley Wolpert writes:
[In 1936] Jinnah made one
other important addition to the League. Next to Liaquat Ali Khan, who
served Jinnah most effectively as honorary secretary of the League, the
young raja of Mahmudabad(1914-1973), Amir Ahmad Khan, was Jinnah's
foremost supporter in the United Provinces. As the largest Muslim
landlord of Lucknow, the raja enjoyed an estimated income of some 2
million rupees annually. Jinnah appointed him treasurer of the League's
central board.

The platform adopted by Jinnah's central board on which Muslim League
candidates stood for election in January-February 1937 was much the
same as that of Congress, including these advanced nationalist demands:
...[list of demands]

Each of these had long been integral to the Congress national demand,
and all were anathemas to more conservative Muslim parties, such as the
Agriculturist party of the United Provinces landlords, formed at
Governor Sir Malcolm Hailey's instigation.

The one clear divergence between the League's socioeconomic position
and that of Congress, however, which reflected a basic difference in
philosophy dividing Jinnah from Nehru and Subhas Bose, was the League's
firm opposition "to any movement that aims at expropriation of private
property." Even as Jawaharlal placed increasing faith in socialist
solutions for India's problems of poverty, Jinnah retreated more than
ever behind the bastions of private property.

...The platform adopted by the League's central board in 1936 included,
indeed, a number of important concessions to Islamic fundamentalist
groups within India, if not as yet to the extremist advocates of a
Pakistan National Movement. Three out of fourteen planks were drafted
exclusively to appeal to special concerns of the Muslim minority, whose
482 separate electorate seats alone were among those contested by
League candidates.

The League's first plank was:"To protect the religious rights of the
Mussalmans. In all matters of purely religious character, due weight
shall be given to the opinions of Jamiat-ul-Ulema Hind[Indian Ulema
Party] and the Mujtahids." Two later planks were : "to protect and
promote Urdu language and script." and "to devise measures for the
amelioration of the general conditions of Muslims."

The Indian Ulema party, born during the Khilafat Movement and then
relatively dormant under the leadership of Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani
and Maulana Ahmad Said, had merged with the Muslim Conference party in
the United Provinces to contest elections as the "Muslim Unity Board,",
presided over by the raja of Salempur, with brilliant Choudhry
Khaliquzzaman as its secretary.

In February of 1937, Khaliquzzaman and several members of his board met
with Jinnah in Delhi and were promised a majority on the League's
United Provinces parliamentary board if they joined forces. It was one
of Jinnah's most creative political coups- surrendering numerical for
nominal power.

The one thing he demanded was that Unity Board candidates all run as
Muslim Leaguers, this enhancing his party's stature while broadening
the base of its support. He knew that to build a national party capable
of asserting effective demands both to Congress and the British raj he
might have to surrender provincial powers to any number of local
magnates.

...Liaquat Ali Khan was, however, furious at having lost control over
choosing Muslim League candidates from his own province and tried his
best to regain the power of selecting members for the UP's board,
despite the fact that he was in a minority among the Lucknow seven on
the League's central board. Jinnah gave his verdict against Liaquat,
who was so annoyed after their July meeting in Bombay that he resigned
from both parliamentary boards and sailed off to England for a few
months. Jinnah thus almost lost the support of the man who could become
his right arm in transforming the League into a party second only to
Congress, and Pakistan's first prime minister.

Yet he would rather risk so important a loss than go back on his word
once it was given. Oxford-educated Liaquat later hailed him as "the
Disraeli of Indian politics", admiring his "unpurchasability" and
recognizing the wisdom of his political judgement even when he most
disliked its impact on his personal base of power.

...Jinnah's judgement paid off handsomely by the year's end; his League
and its allies captured 29 out of 35 Muslim seats for which its
candidates competed, while the Congress returned not a single Muslim
member on its own. Rafi Ahmad Kidwai was elected only because of
Khaliquzzaman's help. It was an impressive show of strength, and had
the League done nearly as well elsewhere, Jinnah might have wrested
some real concessions from Congress's haughty leadership.

In the Punjab, however, only 2 out of 7 League candidates were elected,
in Assam 9 out of 34, in Bengal 39 out of 117. Most of the League's
minority in Bombay and Madras were returned and 109 Muslim League seats
were captured for British India as a whole. By Jinnah's own estimate
his party returned from 60-79 percent of its total number of
candidates. Congress alone won 716 out of 1585 seats in all eleven
provinces, however, enjoying absolute majorities in most of the
country; but it elected only 26 Muslim members, an Achilles heel it
hoped to remedy through working much harder in future Muslim "mass
contact".

Nehru stalking the campaign trail in 1937, made the mistake of refusing
to take the Muslim League and the communal problem seriously, insisting:

"There are only two forces in the country, the Congress and the
government... To vote against the Congress candidate is to vote for the
continuance of British domination..It is the Congress alone which is
capable of fighting the government. The opponents of the Congress are
bound with each other by a community of interests. Their demands have
nothing to do with the masses."

"I refuse to line up with the Congress" Jinnah insisted, when he heard
Nehru's simplistic analysis in Calcutta early in January. "There is a
third party in this country and that is the Muslims." A few days later
Jinnah publicly warned Nehru and the Congress to "leave the Muslims
alone"; but sensing victory, Nehru refused to be intimidated and
decided, instead of backing away from India's Muslim electorate, to
seek to convert the vast mass of them to Congress's platform.

"Mr Jinnah...objects to the Congress interfering with Muslim affairs in
Bengal and calls upon the Congress to let Muslims alone...Who are the
Muslims? Apparently only those who follow Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim
League." "What does the Muslim League stand for?" Nehru asked, with
gratuitous insult and acerbity he would long live to regret[but not his admirers -blogger].

"Does it stand for the independence of India, for anti-imperialism? I
believe not. It represents a group of Muslims, no doubt highly
estimable persons, for functioning in the higher regions of the upper
middle classes and having no contacts with the Muslim masses and few
even with the Muslim lower class. May I suggest to Mr. Jinnah that I
come into greater touch with the Muslim masses than most of the members
of the Muslim League."

It would not be the last of Nehru's political errors of judgement in
his dealings with Jinnah, but it was one of the most fatal mistakes he
ever made in a moment of hubris. More than Iqbal, it was Nehru who
charted a new mass strategy for the League, prodding and challenging
Jinnah to leave the drawing rooms of politics to reach down to the
hundred million Muslims who spent most of each day laboring in rural
fields.[No kidding. Prod a Pakistani
politician to leave the drawing room and reach out to those he wants to
rule? Big mishtake- blogger].

There was, of course, only one possible way for the League to stir up
that mass, to awaken it, and to lure it to march behind Muslim
leadership. The cry of Islam-in danger-of din (religion) alone could
emerge as the unique stand of the Muslim League.

"No common principle or policy binds them." Nehru had taunted,
referring to Jinnah's independent "party" in the assembly. And for
Jinnah this was as significant a turning point, traumatically triggered
by public humiliation, as the Congress non-cooperation resolution
rebuke he had sustained at Nagpur in 1920.

"What can I say to the busybody President of the Congress?" Jinnah
remarked of Nehru in an interview several months later. "He seems to
carry the responsibility of the whole world on his shoulders and must
poke his nose into everything except minding his own business."

...Khaliquzzaman, who belonged to Congress for two decades before
merging his Unity Board with the League in 1936, hoped that a
Congress-League coalition government, including himself, might be
appointed to administer the United Provinces. Muslim Rafi Kidwai, their
leader of the Congress at this time, had been Motilal's secretary and
remained Jawaharlal's confidant in Nehru's home province. Kidwai and
Khaliquzzaman were old friends, and it was hardly surprising,
therefore, for them to discuss a coalition ministry with Kidwai
promising Khaliquzzaman "two Muslim Leaguers to join the Congress
ministry" prior to his election. Nehru "turned down" the League after
his victory.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was the only Muslim on the Congress Working
Committee and managed to wean the provincial Ulema party away from its
committment to the League in mid-May of 1936. Azad used the classic
lures of a provincial cabinet office with all its seductive perquisites
to achieve that dramatic defection.

...To Jinnah, Azad's political treachery placed him beneath contempt.
"This is war to the knife," Jinnah remarked, after learning of the
Jamiat-ul-Ulema's flip-flop. That July, Azad visited Lucknow and
tried to negotiate a settlement with Khaliquzzaman, offering to bring
him into the United Provinces cabinet if "The Muslim League group in
the United Provinces Legislature shall cease to function as a separate
group," its members all becoming "part of the Congress Party,", the
League's provincial Parliamentary Board this, in effect, agreeing to
"dissolve". Khaliq rightly read those terms as a "death warrant" of the
provincial party over which he presided and refused to agree.
Meanwhile, Nehru called upon Congress committees throughout India to
intensify recruitment among "the Muslim masses".

...Wherever Jinnah went that summer and early fall he invited Muslim
leaders he met to come to Lucknow to attend the forthcoming League
session. Besides Shafi's son-in-law, Mian Bashir Ahmad, other powerful
non-League leaders, including the new premiers of the Punjab and
Bengal, Unionist Sir Sikander Hayat Khan(1892-1942) and Fazlul Haq,
also came to Lucknow at Jinnah's behest; and before leaving that
fateful session of the League they would agree to join forces in what
was about to become a revitalized united Muslim movement, alarmed by
Congress's victories and Nehru's attempts to cut the mass base of their
constituencies out from under their very feet if they failed to respond
with alacrity and unity to that clear and present Hindu-atheist
challenge.

...Building a mass party become the Quaid-i-Azam's primary occupation
during 1938 and 1939. From its winter session at Lucknow in 1937 to the
spring League meeting at Lahore in 1940, the Muslim League's membership
multiplied from a few thousand to well over half a million. Membership
dues were dropped after Lucknow to half the purely nominal four-anna
fee charged by the Congress, inviting any Muslim of India with two
annas to his name to join the All-India Muslim League..

...In March 1938..on the eve of passing his mantle of leadership to
Bose, Nehru wrote Jinnah: "We are eager to do everything in our power
to put an end to every misapprehension and to endeavour to solve every
problem that comes in the way of our developing our public life along
right lines and promoting the unity and progress of the Indian people."

Nehru asked Jinnah to "let me know what exactly are the points in
dispute which require consideration." to which Jinnah replied, "But do
you think that this matter can be discussed, much less solved, by and
through correspondence?" Jawaharlal agreed that it was "always helpful
to discuss matters and problems face to face," but "Correspondence
helps in this process and sometimes is even preferable as is more
precise than talk. I trust therefore that you will help in clarifying
the position by telling us where we differ and how you would like this
difference to end." Jinnah, however, was most reluctant to be lured
into written debate of differences, insisting it was "highly
undesirable and and most inappropriate," trenchantly arguing: "You
prefer talking at each other whereas I prefer talking to each other.
Surely you know and you ought to know what are the fundamental points
in dispute."

By rejecting Jawaharlal's repeated appeal for an updated brief on the
Muslim argument, Jinnah was not merely saving vital energy when demands
on his time had escalated from his own lieutenants. He was also holding
out till Gandhi was ready to invite him to talk..

By late February, Gandhi himself did write: that he had accepted Abul
Kalam Azad as his guide and that "conversation should be opened in the
first instance as between you and the Maulana Sahib. But in every case,
regard me as at your disposal." But Jinnah replied that "I find that
there is no change in your attitude and mentality when you say you
would be guided by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad."

Jinnah insisted not only upon full recognition of his League as the
"one authoritative" political body in British India representing all
Muslims, but he demanded prior acceptance by Gandhi of his equivalent
role as spokesman for all Hindus.

From Congress's perspective, neither position was tenable-as Jinnah
well knew. But what better way of avoiding debate? Reconciliation with
Congress was, after all, the last thing he wanted at this juncture.
Nothing would do more to undermine his cause of uniting the Muslim
community against the clear and present danger of a "Hindu raj".

Any form of Congress-League rapprochement in 1938, whether provincial
or central, partial or even potential, would have taken the wind out of
the full sails of his League's mass recruitment effort and dramatic
growth. His entire strategy was, indeed, based on rallying to his ranks
every good Muslim who feared for the future of his faith in a land
ruled by hostile Hindus. To have agreed to swing his fragile craft
round just as it was starting to pick up speed under full wind would
have been suicidal to Muslim League prospects. Jinnah might easily have
negotiated the concession of a few seats in the Bombay and other
provincial cabinets, but he would certainly have lost Pakistan in the
process.

...The Mahatma.. [came] to
Jinnah's house in Bombay alone on April 28, after Jinnah refused to
break his journey from Calcutta to Wardha. [Bose] came to Bombay and met with
Jinnah in early May. But those talks resolved nothing..

Jinnah returned to Simla that August for the Central Assembly's
session, and acting viceroy Lord Brabourne..invited Jinnah and soon
after Sikander to meet with him. That crucial, secret summit with
leaders of Muslim India sealed the fate of the still unimplemented
"federation" of autonomous British provinces and princely states that
was to have been the keystone of the Government of India Act of 1935.

Secretary of State Lord Zetland, reported Brabourne's account to him of
that important interview on Tuesday evening, August 16, 1938: "Jinnah
ended up with the startling suggestion that "we should keep the centre
as it was now' that we should make friends with the Muslims by
protecting them in the Congress provinces and if we did that, the
Muslims would protect us at the Centre!" Sir Sikander seconded Jinnah's
position, arguing that "we are made to go ahead with the Federation
scheme which is obviously playing straight into the hands of Congress
and that the Muslims, given a fair deal by us, would stand by us
through thick and thin." That reassurance was crucial to Britain on the
eve of its most difficult war, for the British Indian Army still
depended heavily on Muslim troops, and the Punjab remained her more
most fertile source of fresh recruits.

On September 3, 1939, Lord Linlithgow broadcast the news of Germany's
invasion of Poland. Linlithgow met with Gandhi for almost two hours the
following day, after which the viceroy saw Jinnah. Jinnah appealed to
the the viceroy for "something positive" to take back to his party to
help him rally Muslim support for the war. Asked if he wanted Congress
ministries thrown out, Jinnah replied, "Yes! Turn them out at once.
Nothing else will bring them to their senses..They will never stand by
you." During this conversation on September 4, 1939, moreover, Jinnah
revealed to the viceroy that he now believed the only ultimate solution
for India "lay in partition".

...On October 5, Jinnah arrived at the viceregal palace, "friendly and
cooperative" and "began by thanking Linlithgow for helping to keep the
Muslims together and Linlithgow replied that it was in public interest
for the Muslim point of view to be fully and competently expressed."
Jinnah pleaded for "more protection" for Muslims, but Linlithgow
frankly informed him that after studying the charges of persecution in
Congress provinces he "could find no specific instances of oppression".
Jinnah argued that "Hindus had a 'subtle intention' to undermine the
Muslim position.."

[During the All India Muslim League
session in December 1938, Jinnah asked in a speech] speaking
to Gandhi "Why not come as a Hindu leader proudly representing your
people and let me meet you proudly representing the Musalmans? This is
all that I have to say so far as the Congress is concerned."

[However] Rather than growing
more receptive to admitting "Hindu" identity, Congress had.. become
more determined than ever to prove its comprehensively national
character-and was to remain so-insisting that religious bias played no
role in its deliberations, policies, or programs. ...[In a March 1940 speech in
Lahore Jinnah said ]"The problem of India is not of an
inter-communal but manifestly of an international character, and it
must be treated as such. So long as this basic fundamental truth is not
realized, any constitution that may be built will result in disaster
and will prove destructive and harmful not only to the Musalmans, but
also to the British and Hindus."

...Jinnah's Lahore address lowered the final curtain on any prospects
for a single united independent India.